It uses computers and electronics (supposedly the fruits of the competitive, anti-egalitarian social order under which we live) to show how new technologies, which need fewer resources than their predecessors, always end up consuming ever more resources from the moment they enter the competitive market, and why they always fail to deliver the bright future that’s always promised, exacting instead a terrible toll on human life and health .

The Bleeding Edge is published by New Internationalist in September 2016 (in the UK; in December 2016 in the US and Canada), and you can order a copy here: